Limits of Imports from Economics into Competition Law

This article is part of a volume on limits of competition law. It explores a particular type of limitations, which has not recieved the attention it deserves. These limits stem from finite legal technology and bear on imports from economics into competition law. There is usually more than one way to import any given element of economic wisdom into a court decisions, but there is a finite number of options. Therefore, courts who are willing to take on an economic arguments will have to make choices as to the most suited legal technique among those available. In this article, I offer a typology of available legal techniques and explain their respective characteristics in terms of three characteristics, which matter for importing economics: degree of legal change implied, flexibility and fidelity to economic reasoning. I argue that it is important that courts become aware of the choice-of-technique decisions they are making and that scholars consider this methodological dimension of competition law & economics.